The British mobile carrier EE has hooked up a rural village in the north of England using a new kind of LTE network that doesn’t require fixed-line broadband connections to its base stations, and that can therefore be deployed within a few hours.

The deployment, in the Cumbrian village of Sebergham, uses a “micro network” system from equipment provider Parallel Wireless. The system’s cells connect to one another in a mesh network, which in turn connects wirelessly back to the internet backbone. (I’m waiting on details from EE about how far this connection is from the village.)

The lack of a need for large masts and underground cables “changes the economics of mobile coverage,” EE said in a statement.

The carrier said just three or four cells can cover between 100-150 buildings (Sebergham has 129 houses) over an area of half a square mile. Handily, as the base stations can…